Once upon a time, there were three DJs at the Wet Grooves concert in Dallas, and their names were the Scumfrog, D:Fuse and Skribble. And at the concert, the show was stopped for several hours because of problems with wires and machines and such. When the show started again, it was too late for the three DJs to play their whole sets. So the Scumfrog and D:Fuse and Skribble thought about it together and decided to all go out and play together. And they had so much fun that they decided to do it again. And that was the beginning of DJs Are Alive.
And, to break out of the fairy tale voice, the bottle of Patron helped, too, according to Scumfrog, a.k.a. Jesse Houk.
DJs Are Alive has since grown to include Detroit-born Static Revenger and Las Vegan‚ Kristine W, whose most recent huge hit was "Land of the Living" in 2005.
But this is not just another DJ collective with the added bonus of a female vocalist. All of the DJs play real, live instruments.
"All of us have one leg in the live musicianship and one leg in the DJ culture," says Houk, "and that's really necessary to do something like this because a lot of us have tried to play with more conventional musicians and they tend to do 16-minute solos, which is not really the thing to do in house music."
Both D:Fuse (Dustin Fuselier) and Houk are percussionists. Kristine also plays percussion, plus saxophone as well as singing. Static Revenger (Dennis White) plays guitar and keyboards. But the roles are fluid.
"We all kinda switch around," says Kristine. "Like, I'll play the drums when D comes up on stage."
Skribble seems to be odd man out, lacking the band experience, but according to Houk, he plays one of the most important roles.
"He's really the backbone of the entire band because what he does, he's really producing the whole thing on stage. While a band will just be the sum of the individual instruments, he's adding filters and effects on everybody's voice and vocals so it really sounds like an electronic record. ... He's making sure it all sounds freaky and tough."
Aside from the Wet Grooves problems—actually caused by some ill-timed lightning—the other inspiration behind DJs Are Alive is a desire to bring excitement back to turntablism when more and more DJs aren't using turntables and instead opting for CDs.
"I use Serato [a popular piece of mixing equipment in which DJs can store tracks electronically for play later]," says Scott Iacacci, a.k.a. DJ Skribble. "I'm not ashamed to admit it. But it's not entertaining to see a guy up there with his head in a computer screen."
"The whole idea was to put a face to dance music because it's such a faceless genre," says Kristine. "The fans want to connect with us."
Since forming, the group has managed to play a few gigs with rehearsals held at Kristine's local ranch. The full group debut was in New York's Canal Room in February, followed by another performance at Mansion during Miami's Winter Music Conference, followed by opening the International Dance Music Awards show, also at the WMC.
With all the members busy with successful careers, not to mention being scattered around the country, rehearsal time is tough to come by but recording is easier—ironically thanks to the same technological advances which the band is rallying against.
"The hardest thing about this project is getting everybody into one room," says Houk. "The easiest thing is getting along and making it sound good."
"We want to focus as much as we can on the whole live aspect," says Houk, "and if we have time to do a studio album, that'd be awesome. But for now, we really want to do a couple of live gigs and maybe a live album."
"I'd really like to see us do a live album," echoes Kristine.
Their first single, "Gimme Some Love," can be found online at www.myspace.com/djsarealive—as well as a video clip of the group in rehearsal—with two versions available for purchase at BeatPort.com.
"The future plans are to establish a routine for us and a protocol for promoters and bookers," says Houk. "We all know we can do this for so much money, and we're all willing to go down in our fees so much because obviously we can't be the sum of all our fees because that would be totally unaffordable."
Touring plans are up in the air at the moment, but Skribble and Houk say they have a lot of offers this summer. Nothing's been confirmed for Vegas—yet—but all dates will be posted on MySpace.
But the big question is: What's the music itself like? Kristine describes it as "progressive house, and kind of aggressive house ... It feels like a rock band in a way."